With 705,000 views, this video went viral a while ago. You don't need to understand Mandarin to appreciate the brilliant simplicity of inventor Chen Jianjun's concept: a train that never has to stop at a station. Designed for use on the high speed Wuhan-Guangzhou corridor, the concept uses detachable (and dock-able) disembarkation pods for on-the-go passenger transfers. In eliminating just 15 three-minute stops on the 968-kilometre stretch it would save 45 minutes. The Wugang Passenger Railway, as the line is also known, is already the world's fastest train service (313 km/h average speed impress you much?). It opened for service in December 2009.

"The Train that Never Stops" was a fascinating idea in the first place as its viewership attests, but now it has hit the big time - it made it into the New York Times Magazine's The Year in Ideas - an annual celebration of extraordinary thinking.

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About the Bus Pusher

Gavin Barrett is Owner/Founding Partner + Creative Director, of award-winning Toronto agency Barrett and Welsh. In pursuit of big ideas he has: nibbled on pigs' ears (not on a live pig at the time); gone elephant-back in the Thai jungle (no elephants were hurt); gambled in a Macau casino (was utterly destroyed). His ads: have run in 35 countries, helped elect prime ministers, attracted the ire of the lawyers for Dolly the clone sheep, drawn an angry crowd in Lagos, have been studied in business texts in Canada and India and received derisive mention in a John Irving novel. His poems: can be found in Penguin’s anthology of 14 contemporary Indian poets, Reasons for Belonging.
He cannot: sing.

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